


Darling, everything's on fire

by AgapantoBlu



Series: There's a monster in my mirror [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Happy Ending, Gen, POV Second Person, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Returning Home, Survivor Guilt, There's one (1) sentence that implies a self-harming thought but nothing more than that, song-fic, war survivors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-07
Updated: 2018-03-07
Packaged: 2019-03-28 05:24:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13897188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgapantoBlu/pseuds/AgapantoBlu
Summary: It’s a slow process of mind, to realize you all can go home; one that takes you almost the whole travel to the Garrison to complete. You only really believe it with your mom’s arms wrapped around your waist, her face in your shoulder and her tears soaking through your undershirt. It kind of happens like,oh.It takes you so long to return the hug, you wonder if you still know how to.-I remember you said, ''don't leave me here alone'',but all that is dead and gone and passed, tonight.(Taylor Swift & The Civil Wars - "Safe and Sound")





	Darling, everything's on fire

**Author's Note:**

> This turned into a series. Fan-fucking-tastic. 
> 
> Also, I'm running a fever and have a cold, so forgive all my mistypes.
> 
> EDIT: I accidentally posted this in Third Person POV at first, even though I'd decided to stick to Second Person POV. It's fixed now.

  

**_I remember tears streaming down your face when I said I'll never let you go,  
when all those shadows almost killed your light._ **

 

Here’s how it happens: in a daze.

Like Zarkon’s death, the fall of the Empire happens too fast for any of you to comprehend clearly. It’s just fight after fight after fight after fight until suddenly there’s nothing to fight anymore, and what now? You’re left with bloodied armors and bruised bodies to watch the graveyard in your steps.

It’s a slow process of mind, to realize you all can go home; one that takes you almost the whole travel to the Garrison to complete. You only really believe it with your mom’s arms wrapped around your waist, her face in your shoulder and her tears soaking through your undershirt. It kind of happens like,  _oh_.

It takes you so long to return the hug, you wonder if you still know how to.

**_I remember you said, "don't leave me here alone.”_**  

 

It is, you think, an awful thing to realize you’re an hero in the whole universe but your own planet.

Shiro is going to have to go through a trial to be either readmitted as an official or dishonorably discharged from the Garrison Corps for dragging four minors into a war, no in betweens.  Keith will take some time with his parents because a Galra half-blood is too tempting of a specimen for most the humans who know of the war that’s just been sidestepped by luck, and then maybe he will try to get reaccepted too, but who knows how long it will take.  Hunk will go back home in the Samoa for a while, because his heart has never been for war and he deserves some peace.  Pidge will find a new dream that does not limit itself to reuniting her family and maybe she and Matt will join their father in the Garrison’s labs.  Allura and Coran will soon leave again, to go back to space and find somewhere to call home, lonely survivors of their whole race. 

And what of you?

You had wanted to be a pilot his whole life. Your family had taken to call you Baby Blue long before you took your first lion, just because of how long you’d be staring at the night sky, just because you _mama_ had taken one look at your eyes one day and called you so. 

_Baby Blue with all the stars within, Lancy, that’_ _s who you are. Reach out your hand and_   _you_ ’ _ll touch the sky,_ Veronica used to tell you at night, caressing your hair softly as she put you to bed.

_You’ll be a pilot soon enough,_ Luis had promised, ruffling your hair _, and then you’ll wave at us from up there._

_You’re made for great things, baby brother,_ Marco had whispered, with a touch of malinconia, from his throne of oldest son, holding your hands like your father always did.  _I can’t wait to see you do them._

When you had decided on the Garrison, it had been no-one’s surprise. There had been a family meeting, and your siblings had pulled out their savings from their side jobs, and your mom had taken over more shifts, and your aunts and uncles had added their shares, and they’d made it, they’d sent you there, because space is where you had always belonged.

You had been there now, and it was not how you’d dreamt it.

You’d never meant for space to substitute your family.

 

**_But all that is dead and gone and passed tonight._ **

 

It’s barely dawn and you're all sitting in the communal kitchen for the rooms the Garrison has disposed for you and your families. It’s been so long since you’d been allowed to sleep in, what with fleet after fleet coming after you, and the quiet of the place is just… _too loud._

You’re not talking, and what’s there to say? You're all pilots, the Garrison can’t teach you anything you haven’t already been in a pod for. You're all fighters with your weapons still strapped to your thighs, jerking at the shadows in every corner, looking at the sky and seeing battleships in the unknown stars.

Your dreams had all come true. So much for it.

Be careful of what you wish, indeed.

 

**_Just close your eyes, the sun is going down._ **

 

“Am I the only one who feels like an ungrateful ass?” Matt says, and you are glad, so glad, he spoke up because it breaks something in the room, rips a tired laughter from Shiro’s lips.

Hunk sighs to his untouched glass of orange juice. “I’ve been waiting to eat all this Earth stuff for literal years, and don’t get me wrong, everything was delicious, but all I could think of last night was that it was a huge waste of supplies were we to be stuck without being able to get more.”

“I almost yelled at mom when she said I could get a sip of wine to celebrate, if I wanted, because how could I? Someone had to keep sober,” Pidge added quietly. “I don’t think she realized I meant in case of an attack. I think she took it as a joke.”

You watch Keith outstretch a hand to touch her shoulder slowly. He’s not much for physical contact, but this… this a special occasion. It’s nice to see even your resident loner is not unaffected by the bomb that’s been dropped on you after the second week you've been back.

You won’t be allowed to be together for a while. Only phone-calls, not even videos, and only for strictly brief amounts of time.  

Logically, you all can see that the therapists the Garrison offered them are right. Taking a break from each other really is the best solution to help you grow out of the co-dependence you have developed by living in the close quarters of the castle for so long, by being mind-connected via your lions, by saving each others time and time again and leaning in the feeling of the team, of the  _Voltron_ unit, rather than your own individualities.

Really, it’s a good idea. It’s therapy, it’s... healing. God, even just the idea of dressing in a color that’s not blue-coded makes you want to drag your nails down your arms, scratch your skin off. It feels wrong, it feels like a betrayal, how will they know you're the Blue Paladin, then?

They won’t, because you're not anymore. That’s the whole point of going back to Earth.

You know this with your brain, but you're still wearing your blue shirt and green bomber, and Pidge still has her green attire, and Keith his red jacket and Shiro his black shirt and Hunk his yellow tank and orange headband and— really, did you even come back from space at all?

You know you're all going to leave soon. Tomorrow or the day after at most. 

You're going to lose them, you're losing them all, what did you come back for if they’re just going to take one of your families away from you again, can’t they see it’s just the same?, do they even care?

“We knew it wasn’t going to be easy,” Shiro is saying, softly. It’s his leader-voice and the way it feels familiar, the way it reassures you no questions asked, is just another proof that what you have risks to develop into something utterly twisted, hurtful.

You almost say,  _no shit._ You stop yourself just in time.

**_You'll be alright, no one can hurt you now._ **

Your mom is your North Star, the lead of your life, your fixed mark in the galaxy. Your grandma, on the other hand, is an oak to lean against, old wood that smells like rain and strong roots to curl up against. When she steps into the kitchen, you almost laugh when Matt tries to stand and help her. If you did it, she’d hit your ankles with her cane.

She takes one look at your group and sighs, unsurprised, and you pat on the empty seat beside you so she joins the circle. “Too many thoughts ruin breakfast,” she says. It’s scolding enough that all the Paladins smile a bit. “I wake up early to get some quiet from the loud chaos that is this family, and I walk into a bunch of moping teenagers. You’re sending me to an early grave, kids.” 

You are a buffoon, it’s what you do when your family — _either_ of your families — is down, so you mutter, “Early?”, and laugh at the cuff that reaches your nape. They all laugh, though, so it’s a win.

Maria Rosalooks at you all again, then she turns to you. “Talk it out,” she says, “It will just fester if you keep it in.”

**_Come morning light, you and I'll be safe and sound._ **

 

“We talked enough last night,  _abuela_ ,—“ you try, “—I think we’re out of stories to tell.” 

You don’t want to talk it out. You want to keep it in, let it fester and then— Yeah, you really need that therapist.  

Your grandma shakes her head. “Baby Blue, I was child during the war, but I still remember it,” her gaze glasses over and something shift, in all of you, to let her in. It’s the kind of feeling you got when letting Matt in, the type where you recognize someone of your kin just by their presence, a survivor to another. “If you don’t want to talk to me, it’s fine,” she says. “But don’t think for a moment that I will truly believe your war has been just space goo and cows at the mall and mermaids.”

 

**_Don't you dare look out your window, darling, everything's on fire.  
the war outside our door keeps raging on._ **

 

When Shiro came back the first time, they had him arrested and strapped to a table. 

You can’t get the picture out of your mind. Shiro is a  _hero_ , your hero. He was coming to warn Earth of a war and he got treated like an animal in return. How could they? Looking back to the scene, your heart falters at the utter injustice of it, at the cruelty toward someone who'd been through so much, someone you yourself would —  _did, did, did —_ take a blow for.

Coming back to Earth should have meant coming back home, but somewhen entering the atmosphere, you had recognized the feeling in your gut as the same of whenever Coran sent you in mission to some planet full of Galran colonies.

You had had to excuse yourself to the bathroom and muffle your sobs with a fist in your mouth, curled on the floor, crying your heart out because somehow, somewhen, as you had your back turned and didn’t pay attention, your brain had picked Earth and re-classified it.

_Hostile, danger, danger, danger, enemy, hostile._ The sirens in your brain wouldn’t stop screaming.

They still haven’t.

 

**_Hold onto this lullaby even when the music's gone, gone._ **

You know the others are even more uncomfortable than you are. You all have your demons, you're all too fucked up to function, even if the shrinks keep calling it a _readjusting period_. It’s not a period if you can’t assure it’s going to end, someday.

Your grandma just looks at them, and you wonder what she sees.

Does she know Shiro can’t sleep a full night anymore? Can she tell that Hunk looks at Earth food in suspicion now, because some things look too much like space stuff you'd found to be poisonous the hard way? Can she tell Pidge is not comfortable in her girl dresses anymore because they’re impractical during a fight, and that Matt has yet to get his glasses back from her because it was a broken lens that left him with a scar on his face? Does she care that Keith is half-Galra?, because he still does, from time to time.

What does she see when she looks at you? Is it still her little nephew, or is it a stranger?

_Hey, abuela,_ you want to say _, I hope you can still love me, despite everything._

You don’t really want to hear the answer, though.

 

**_Just close your eyes, the sun is going down._**

 

You were caught up in a bomb, the first time you got into a pod. You could tell your grandma that, you have enough nightmares about it to make it count as a confession. You could talk about Sendak, about Haggar, about the druids. You could talk about the Blades you saw dying, and the towns you saw going down in flames. 

But what you say is, “I’m sorry.  _Abuela_ , I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

 

**_You'll be alright, no one can hurt you now._ **

Your bayard took three forms. A gun, a sniper rifle, a sword. Does this mean you're so much more of a killer than the others?

The curtains of tears in your eyes turn your grandma into a blurred shape of dark brown and blinding white, equals the other paladins to their color and churns your stomach in a tight ball of burning lava. You bend over in half, pray for your mouth to close, but it doesn’t obey.

“ _Abuela_ ,  _abuela, abuela,_ I’m so sorry,  _abuela_ , I’m sorry,  _abuela._ "

Keith was right, in the end: you really can’t stop talking to save your life, can you?

 

**_Come morning light, you and I'll be safe and sound._ **

_“_ It was not an accident,” you sob, and you can  _feel_  the others shift with the need to stand and approach, to touch you and give you the support you need, because that’s what you've always done, the only way you all know how to deal with  _this._ “They didn’t mean to,  _abuela_ , they had no choice, they were protecting themselves."

You all did horrible things. It’s all war is about, isn’t it? But the thought of your grandma looking at your friends as if they were monsters is almost more heartbreaking than having her look at you like that. Because you've seen Shiro point his arm at his own stomach to try and save them, and you've had Hunk jumping in the way of blasts heading to any of you, because Pidge faced Sendak for you and Keith would have died against that shield for you had it been necessary.

You, though? You—

“I— I—  _Abuela,_ I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I could have done it differently, but— I  _aimed_.  _Abuela_ , I  _aimed_. I killed someone,  _abuela,_ I killed so many people,  _abuela, abuela,_ I’m sorry—” 

When they saved Slav, you took out the Galra’s arm. You didn’t always get their arms though.

Your friends fought close quarters, put their lives on the line, and you don’t feel as bad about the times you did so himself. But most of your missions, you'd been a sniper. You’d hidden somewhere and shot unknowing targets from the safety of your vantage point. They couldn’t have taken you even if they’d known. You'd been the most cowardly fighter in your group, and you know the others will always deny, but you’ll always know and you need your family to know because you can’t lie to them, never could.

You  _aimed_ for Galra's heads. It’s different from shooting to a ship or a robot sentinel. It’s not the same as sparring sword to sword or gun to arm and winning, fair and square.

“ _Abuela— Abuela_ , forgive me. Forgive me, I’m so sorry, forgive me, forgive me, for—"

You're too shaken up by the sobs to be properly aware of the soothing voices calling you, of the metal hand between your shoulder-blades and the chubby fingers entwining yours. You just wishes you could lift your head and look at your grandma, but you really are a coward through and through. 

**_Just close your eyes, you'll be alright._ **

 

In the end, it’s her who has to bring a hand under your chin to make you look up.

“You’re a stupid child, you know, Baby Blue?” the blurred shape of hers says. “Stupid, but good. With a good heart, in the right place.”

She says, “Nobody is ever old enough to see what all of you did. Nobody is ever old enough to choose who gets to die and who gets to live with absolute certainty of being in the right.” 

She says, “The calls you made were born of your need to protect your family, and that doesn’t make it easier, but it makes it the only choice you had, because that’s how your heart is wired."

She says, “What you did will never leave you alone, so you’ll have to be the one who grants you a break. No one else can, Baby Blue, not even I, and you have to know I would if I could.”

She says, “You came back, all of you did. Enough now. It’s time to rest."

She says, "My Baby Blue boy, with all the universe and its stars in his eyes."

 

_**Come morning light, you and I'll be safe and sound.** _

There are going to be fireworks for your send off, tomorrow, and you're all going to freeze and pretend you're not flinching inside at every bang that sounds so much like a gunshot. There are going to be nightmares to keep you up for months, and there are going to be stupid little things that will make you crumble down in tears and shallow fast breaths, and there are going to be people who try to help and can’t because some things just  _stick_. 

For tonight, you let yourself fall in your grandma’s arms and cry, and feel all the others around the table sob with you.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know why I went with Lance's Grandma instead of his mom. I think I projected some of my Grandpa in her. Oh, well, I'm ill, I can do what I want.
> 
> Come talk to me at @agapantoblu.tumblr.com if you want.


End file.
